1SFCAPD(1) BSD General Commands Manual SFCAPD(1)
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5 sfcapd — sflow collector for sflow version v2/v4 and v5
6
8 sfcapd -w flowdir [-C config] [-z=<compress>] [-D] [-u userid]
9 [-g groupid] [-S num] [-t interval] [-P pidfile] [-p port]
10 [-d device] [-I ident] [-b bindhost] [-f flowfile] [-4] [-6]
11 [-j mcastgroup] [-R repeater] [-A] [-B buffsize] [-n sourceparam]
12 [-M multiflowdir] [-i metricrate] [-m metricpath] [-e]
13 [-x command] [-E] [-v] [-V]
14
16 sfcapd reads sflow data from the network and stores the records into bi‐
17 nary formatted files. The sflow implementation is based of sflowtool. The
18 packet samples are converted into netflow compatible records.
19 If you want to collect netflow data, please have a look at nfcapd which
21 is also part of the nfdump tools.
22 Sflow is an industry standard developed by InMon Corporation. For more
24 information see http://sflow.org.
25 sfcapd is the twin of nfcapd and supports the same feature set. See also
27 nfcapd(1) for more details.
28 The options are as follows:
30 -w flowdir
32 Set the flow directory to store the output files. If a sub hier‐
33 archy is specified with -S the final directory is concatenated to
34 flowdir/subdir.
35 -C config
37 Reads additional configuration parameters from config file.
38 sfcapd tries to read the config file from the install default
39 path $prefix/etc/ which may be overwritten by the environment
40 variable NFCONF , which again is overwritten by this option -C.
41 If -C none is specified, then no config file is read, even if
42 found in the search path.
43 -p portnum
45 Set the port number to listen. Default port is 9995
46 -d interface
48 Reads sflow data from an erspan encoded datalink. All traffic
49 sent to this interface is interpreted as sflow data stream.
50 -b bindhost
52 Specifies the hostname/IPv4/IPv6 address to bind for listening.
53 This can be an IP address or a hostname, resolving to a local IP
54 address.
55 -4 Forces sfcapd to listen on IPv4 addresses only. Can be used to‐
57 gether with -b if a hostname has IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
58 -6 Forces sfcapd to listen on IPv6 addresses only. Can be used to‐
60 gether with -b if a hostname has IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
61 -J mcastgroup
63 Join the specified IPv4 or IPv6 multicast group for listening.
64 -R host[/port]
66 Enables the packet repeater. All incoming packets are sent addi‐
67 tionally to another host and port. host is either a valid
68 IPv4/IPv6 address, or a symbolic hostname, which resolves to a
69 valid IP address. port may be omitted and defaults to 9995.
70 Note: As IPv4/IPv6 are accepted the host/port separator is '/'.
71 Up to 8 additional repeaters my be defined. Use this method to
72 daisy chain collectors.
73 -A Sets source address spoofing mode for the repeater. The source
75 address of the repeated packages is set to the original IP ad‐
76 dress. This needs sfcapd to be started with root privileges.
77 Please note, that source spoofing may be blocked by firewalls or
78 routers in your network.
79 -I ident
81 Sets ident as identification string for the current source. This
82 string is written into the output file to identify the source.
83 Default is 'none'. If you have multiple sources, see option -n
84 below.
85 -n ident,IP,flowdir
87 Configures a netflow source identified by the string ident, IP
88 flowdir If you have multiple sources per collector, add multiple
89 -n options. All exporters send the flows to the same port -p. Do
90 not mix single source configuration -I with multiple -n options.
91 -M flowdir
93 Set the flow directory for dynamic allocated exporters. New ex‐
94 porters are dynamically added when sending data. All exporters
95 send netflow data to the same port and IP. For each dynamically
96 added source, a new sub directory is created under flowdir with
97 the name of the IP address of the exporter. All '.' and ':" in IP
98 addresses are replaced be '-'. -D Set daemon mode: fork to back‐
99 ground and detach from terminal. sfcapd terminates on signal
100 TERM, INT or HUP.
101 -P pidfile
103 Writes the running process ID into pidfilw. Use this option to
104 integrate sfcapd in start/stop files.
105 -u userid
107 Drop privileges of running process to user userid. sfcapd needs
108 to be started as user root.
109 -g groupid
111 Drop privileges of running process to group groupid. sfcapd
112 needs to be started as user root.
113 -B bufflen
115 Sets the network socket input buffer to bufflen bytes. For high
116 volume traffic it is recommended to raise this value to typically
117 > 100k, otherwise you risk to lose packets. The default is OS
118 (and kernel) dependent.
119 -S num Adds an additional directory sub hierarchy to store the data
121 files. The default is 0, no sub hierarchy, which means all files
122 go directly into flowdir. The flowdir is concatenated with the
123 specified sub hierarchy format to create the final data direc‐
124 tory. The following hierarchies are defined:
125 0 default no hierarchy levels
126 1 %Y/%m/%d year/month/day
127 2 %Y/%m/%d/%H year/month/day/hour
128 3 %Y/%W/%u year/week_of_year/day_of_week
129 4 %Y/%W/%u/%H year/week_of_year/day_of_week/hour
130 5 %Y/%j year/day-of-year
131 6 %Y/%j/%H year/day-of-year/hour
132 7 %Y-%m-%d year-month-day
133 8 %Y-%m-%d/%H year-month-day/hour
134 -t interval
136 Sets the time interval in seconds to rotate files. The default
137 value is 300s ( 5min ). The smallest available interval is 2s.
138 -z=lzo Compress flow files with LZO1X-1 compression. Fastest compres‐
140 sion.
141 -z=lz4 Compress flow files with LZ4 compression. Fast and efficient.
143 -z=bz2 Compress flow files with bz2 compression. Slow but most effi‐
145 cient. It is not recommended to use bz2 in a real time capturing.
146 -e Sets auto-expire mode. At the end of every rotate interval -t
148 sfcapd runs an expire cycle to delete files according to max
149 lifetime and max filesize as defined by nfexpire(1)
150 -x command
152 At the end of every -t interval and after the file rotate has
153 completed, sfcapd runs the command command. The string for
154 command may contain the following place holders, which are ex‐
155 panded before running:
156 %f File name of new data file including any sub hierarchy.
157 %d Top flowdir. The full path of the new file is: %d/%f
158 %t Time slot string in ISO format e.g. 201107110845.
159 %u Time slot string in UNIX time format.
160 %i Identification string ident string supplied by -I
161 -m metricpath
163 Enables the flow metric exporter. Flow metric information is sent
164 to the UNIX socket metricpath at the rate specified by -i This
165 option may by used to export flow metric information to other
166 systems such as InfluxDB or Prometheus. Please note: The flow
167 metric does not include the full record. Only the flow statistics
168 is sent.
169 -i metricrate
171 Sets the interval for the flow metric exporter. This interval may
172 be different from the file rotation interval t and is therefore
173 independent from file rotation.
174 -v Increase verbose level by 1. The verbose level may be increased
176 for debugging purpose up to 3.
177 -E Equal to -v -v -v. Print netflow records in block format to std‐
179 out. Please note, that not all elements are printed, which are
180 available in the flow record. To inspect all elements, use nfdump
181 -o raw This option is for debugging purpose only, to verify if
182 incoming netflow data is processed correctly.
183 -V Print sfcapd version and exit.
185 -h Print help text on stdout with all options and exit.
187
189 sfcapd returns 0 on success and 255 if initialization failed.
190
192 http://sflow.org
193 https://sflow.org/developers/licensing.php
195 https://github.com/sflow/sflowtool
197 nfdump(1) nfcapd(1) nfpcapd(1)
199
201 No software without bugs! Please report any bugs back to me.
202BSD December 20, 2023 BSD